Expense Report Approver Training - Is anyone doing it?

Hi Everyone!

Recently, I have had quite an influx of requests for expense report approver training. Currently, we do not have any internal training documents or resources, and I haven't seen any on the Concur site thus far. I'm curious if this is common at other organizations as well.

Is anyone offering Expense Approver training, or do you have any suggestions or resources for best practices?

Re: Expense Report Approver Training - Is anyone doing it?

Hi Lisa - your question strikes right at the heart of what is the actual role of the expense approver in the process!

At present we only use Expense for Corporate Card transactions. The use of the Corporate Card in my organization to purchase goods and services requires prior approval, therefore making the Expense Approver role more akin to that of a "checker" function.

My Expense approvers are generally high level staff and are time poor. Why should I expect them to know what constitutes a valid Tax Invoice under our legislation? That's where your internal audit rules coupled with Concur Audit takes away that burden and your approvers can simply check the exceptions that they should have intimate knowledge of - ie My trip to Bali last week was a legitimate business expense and not a personal vacation placed on the Corporate Card.

Re: Expense Report Approver Training - Is anyone doing it?

As we're running a phased global roll-out, we also roll-out a global process. This process is new for a lot of our companies and therefore we also provide a "Approver Handout", where we describe and explain the tasks an approver needs to do. From log-on over delegation assignment to claim approval.

From our experience sometimes the approvers must be trained/educated better, than the "regular" claimant, so we've created specific training documents for approvers.

Re: Expense Report Approver Training - Is anyone doing it?

Personally my thought is that approver training is more important! Otherwise you’ll end up with an approvalbeing no more than a rubber stamp. Since we have a limited number of approvers, our training is one-on-one. The most important thing I try to drive home is that by approving an expense, the approver becomes just as responsible for it as the employee submitting the expense.

Re: Expense Report Approver Training - Is anyone doing it?

Thank you all for your feedback!

We use Concur for Travel and Expense and the expenses that are processed are all travel related. We have a separate process for large meetings or events which require the employee goes thorugh purchasing and obtains all necessary pre-approval first.

Our Expense Report Approvers are the direct leaders (Managers, Directors, VP's, etc.,) and as you know, the higher thier position is, the less time they have. We rely heavily on our managers to thoroughly review the expenses before approval and they must also verify that all receipts were reviewed. Once a report is approved by the manager, it is either approved by the Concur system and sent for payment or it is flagged for audit and comes to myself for thorough review. Many of the Executive Admins who are approving on behalf of the higher-level approvers are uncomfortable with some of the decisions that fall on them and have been asking for additional training.

I will definitely make it one of my objectives this year to develop some training materials for our approvers.

Re: Expense Report Approver Training - Is anyone doing it?

Hi Lisa,

If you haven't already, I'd seriously consider looking at adding Concur Audit and / or Concur Detect to your expense workflow. You can tailor the receipt and policy rules that require checking before they end up with the approver. The approver or their EA is then really only lookin for exceptions (things that do not fit the pattern of normal business related spend).

Re: Expense Report Approver Training - Is anyone doing it?

In our global process we even switched the "usual" workflow order:

Claimant -> Compliance Check -> Manager approval -> SAE extraction

That means, that when the claim reaches the manager for final approval, policy compliance has already been checked. Possible policy violations and/or exceptions are highlighted by the expense processor for the approver.

So we're able to tell/teach the approvers, that they only need to check the highlighted line items and cost assignment.